"We're borrowing amps for every show"

Island Of Love are signed to Jack White’s label, but the band’s two guitarists are still hustling for gear in the pursuit of ear-bleeding volume

- By Jonathan Horsley

Island Of Love are a band with a wide dynamic range, big songs, big hooks and all the volume in the world, but none of the gear. They’ve made it this far without the latter. That has become a thing, an in-joke. To say you are “Island Of Lovin’ it” is to say you show up at a show with a setlist and in desperate need of a loan – a guitar or maybe an amp to get the job done. This is de rigueur in the hardcore circles that guitarist/vocalists Karim Newble and Linus Munch moved in before putting Island Of Love together, but it is unbecoming of a band who were the first to be signed to Third Man London, part of Jack White’s empire. With that comes a certain expectation. “When we started rehearsing it we didn’t even have a fuzz pedal, and amps are definitely the next step for us,” says Linus. “We are still borrowing amps every single show.”

There is something about this absence of planning and preparation that is in keeping with how their self-titled debut tumbles out the speakers to ingratiate itself in the ear as though by accident. It’s music written in a key and from a perspective where we’d all like to live. Nothing sounds overworked. The sad songs sound happy. The happy songs sound sad. All of them are a bit of both. Throughout is the sound of organic fuzz and drive – 70s brown, earth-tone corduroy, autumn leaves – and you can’t really decide whether this is a lost-and-found recording of 90s alt-rock or a record of now. Or even which side of the Atlantic you would find Island Of Love. They are out of time, out of place. When the album’s opening song